Marilyn MacGruder Barnewall began her career as a journalist with the Wyoming Eagle in Cheyenne. During her 20 year banking career, she wrote extensively for The American Banker, Bank Marketing Magazine, Trust Marketing Magazine, and other major industry publications. The American Bankers Association (ABA) published Barnewall’s Profitable Private Banking: the Complete Blueprint, in 1987. She taught private banking at Colorado University for the ABA and trained private bankers in Singapore.

Friday, August 08, 2014

WHAT IS DEMOCRACY?

WHAT IS DEMOCRACY?

By Marilyn M. Barnewall

“Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep
voting on what to have for dinner.” --James Bovard, Civil Libertarian (1994)

Our founding fathers
gave us a Constitutional Republic, not a Democracy. The following story explains just what
brilliant men they were to recognize the difference between a Democracy and a
Republic.

If you revisit the article I wrote called “What Is Capitalism?” you will find the
definition of a Constitutional Republic which functions under a Constitution from which the rule of law flows telling
society and government what the rules are – especially the restrictions placed
on government. The people elect members from
the public to represent them in Congress to uphold the law of the land as
stated in the Constitution and to pass legislation in compliance with it.

I don’t know about you, but nothing bothers me more than
hearing people who should know better refer to America as a “Democracy.” It is a Constitutional Republic – or, it may
be a corporation in which only the Uniform Commercial Code provides law. Either way, it is not a Democracy! We may utilize the (manipulated) Democratic voting
process to elect politicians to represent the people, but that does not make us
a Democracy.

Well, maybe one thing bothers me more than hearing people
refer to us as a Democracy and that is when politicians are elected and forget
that to get into office they took an Oath to protect and defend the
Constitution of the United States from all enemies… internal or external.

In a Democracy,
all eligible citizens participate in their government equally – that doesn’t
mean they are all considered equal, only that they participate in government
equally. In Greek, “democracy”
translates to “rule of the people.” That
sounds like America, right? If all one
focuses on is the people’s ability to oust leaders without the need for a
revolution, the word “democracy” sounds like it fits what we do in America. But there is a huge difference between a
Constitutional Republic that utilizes the democratic voting process and a
Democracy.

Throughout
history (both ancient and modern), Democracies were (and are) very much like an
oligarchy. Perhaps that is one reason
our politicians today cannot seem to find the words “Constitutional Republic”
in their computers or what passes for their brains and instead use the word
“Democracy.” It’s pretty apparent that
the powers that be (TPTB), our elected officials in the District of Criminals,
are working their way towards oligarchic control wherein there is an elite
class and a labor class (but no middle class) and everything is controlled by
the elites.

In ancient Athens,
for example, democratic citizenship was granted to an elite class of free men
but excluded slaves and women from political participation. Some examples of nations that defined
themselves as “Democracies” or “Democratic Republics” include Afghanistan
(today a single-party socialist state); the German Democratic Republic – we
used to call it East Germany and it was a Marxist-Leninist socialist state; the
People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia… another Marxist-Leninist single-party
state; Somali Democratic Republic – a single-party socialist state; Sudan, Vietnam, Yemen, and others fall into
that same category. They all started out
calling themselves Democratic Republics (or Democracies). Look where they are now.

To be sure, there are on this rather substantial list three nations
that call themselves Democratic Republics but are listed as either a Republic
(Georgia) or Parliamentary Republic (Azerbaijan and Armenia). Not a very good score for successful “Democratic
Republics,” is it?

Why should we hold tightly to our Constitutional Republic status? One major reason is stated above… Democracies
have a huge tendency to turn into socialist states – Marxist-Leninist socialist
states. Another reason is Democracies
appear to be temporary in nature.

A Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh researched
the subject thoroughly and said so in 1787… you may even have received an email
about it. The email has some errors in
it, but it has for years been sent far and wide and does get the basic message
across pretty accurately. Since I first
wrote about it in 2004, I’ve received the same email at least a dozen times. You may have, too.

According to the
Internet and these numerous emails that have gone out relaying the story about
Democracy, the Scottish history professor is named Alexander Tyler. According
to the University of Edinburgh (where he taught), his name is Alexander Tytler.
Over 10 years ago, I contacted the University of Edinburgh to check. His name is not Tyler; it is TYTLER.

Professor Tytler
said: “A democracy is always temporary
in nature. It simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government.

“A democracy will
continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote
themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the
majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the
public treasury. The result is that every democracy will finally collapse over
loose fiscal policy (which is) always followed by a dictatorship.”

Isn’t that where
we are now? Ben Franklin said in answer
to a question about what form of government the founders had given us, “A
Constitutional Republic, if you can keep it.”
We didn’t keep it. We gave it
away like yesterday’s garbage.

Now you see why I
started this article out with the quote “Democracy
must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for
dinner.” That is probably the simplest, shortest definition of a
Democracy ever written. The above
paragraph quoting Tytler also explains why the list of Democratic Republics has
so many Marxist-Lenninist socialist governments versus only three that
categorize themselves as “Republics.” As
Professor Tytler says in the above paragraph, “…loose fiscal policy is always
followed by a dictatorship.”

The year of
Professor Tytler, 1787, was the time our forefathers and the thirteen states
they represented wrote and adopted our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Did Professor Tytler influence their thinking
as it relates to whether we should be a Democracy or a Constitutional Republic…
as Adam Smith’s definition of capitalism influenced their choice of what
philosophy would drive the American economy?
There is no way to know.

The good
professor further said “The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations
from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200
years, these nations always progressed through”… the following cycles:

“From bondage to
spiritual faith. From spiritual faith to
great courage. From courage to liberty. From liberty to abundance. From
abundance to complacency. From complacency to apathy. From apathy to
dependence. From dependence back into bondage.”

Do the cycles
sound as familiar to you as they do to me?

There is no doubt
that most of the Americans who settled our nation were running from servitude
to various European royal houses. From the records kept of the abiding faith of
our founding fathers, there is no doubt they moved from bondage to spiritual
faith and from there to great courage. Those without courage do not attack the
greatest army of the 18th century.

Our founding
fathers had to have very strong beliefs.
Look what happened to them:

Twelve had their
homes ransacked and burned. Two lost
their sons serving in the Revolutionary Army; another had two sons captured.

Nine of the 56
fought and died from wounds or hardships of the Revolutionary War.

Twenty-four were
lawyers and jurists. (Would these men be
sick over what has happened to their professions?)

Eleven were
merchants, nine were farmers and large plantation owners; men of means,
well-educated, but they signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full
well that the penalty would be death if they were captured.

Carter Braxton of
Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, saw his ships swept from the seas by

the British Navy.
He sold his home and properties to pay his debts, and died in rags.

Thomas McKeam was
so hounded by the British that he was forced to move his family, almost

constantly.
He served in the Congress without pay, and his family was kept in hiding. His
possessions were taken from him, and poverty was his reward.

At the battle of
Yorktown, Thomas Nelson, Jr. noted that the British General Cornwallis had taken
over the Nelson home for his headquarters. He quietly urged General George
Washington to open fire. The home was destroyed, and Nelson died bankrupt.

Francis Lewis had
his home and properties destroyed. The enemy jailed his wife, and she
died within a few months.

John Hart was driven from his wife's bedside as she was
dying. Their 13 children fled for their lives. His fields and
his gristmill were laid to waste. For more than a year he lived in forests
and caves, returning home to find his wife dead and his children vanished.

There is also no
doubt we progressed from their courage to liberty and from that liberty came
abundance.

In today’s
America, it doesn’t take much imagination to identify the abundance to
complacency cycle, does it? It was the complacency of citizens that trusted
their government too much – the 1940s through 60s generations — that allowed it
to grow to serve itself rather than the people who pay for it. Generations that followed ours were
dumbed-down by the government education – indoctrination – system to realize
their freedoms were being stolen, one at a time.

We were blind to
the dangers. We trusted too much people who sought power for its own sake – in
growing, giant corporations as well as government. We didn’t understand the
“power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely” concept. We erred in our
misplaced faith and small groups of deviates established their power bases
within our once great nation and took us over.

The number of
people who do not vote or just do not want to be bothered with the process of
choosing candidates who serve the people rather than their political party is
evidence of the move from complacency to apathy. Too, people become apathetic
when they experience changes they do not want imposed by a government they
cannot control. As the tyranny of a
government gone bad begins, fear tends to paralyze most of the people being
governed – or, better said, ruled.

Do average
Americans want illegal immigrants legalized or do they want amnesty? No. Do average Americans want the current
spate/epidemic of “children” who the CROO (current resident of the Oval Office)
invited to violate our immigration laws and enter the United States
illegally? No. Do average Americans realize that all the
House of Representatives (controlled by the Republicans) has to do to stop the
invasion taking place on our border with Mexico is to cut off the funding to
the nations making it possible for them to come? Probably not.
A lot of people prefer to think of problems rather than solutions to
them.

Did average
Americans want NAFTA or CAFTA – put in place as an introduction to the North
American Union -- (both of which can also be shut down to turn off the illegal
immigration spigot)? No. There are a lot of “but we don’t want it”
programs on the list. So it becomes
clear that the elitists of our nation are running things, not the people. That is typical of Democracies… so no wonder
our elected officials use that word rather than the correct “Constitutional
Republic.”

We only need to
look at government-controlled programs and the number of people dependent upon
them — Social Security, welfare, Medicare, Medicaid, ObamaCare, government
school systems/indoctrination centers — to know a majority are dependent on
government for their daily existence.
This is the group that elected the CROO.
I don’t refer to Social Security or military retirement and medical
benefits as “welfare” because they have been paid for and earned. Nevertheless, they are programs on which
millions of people are dependent for survival.
When you need government to survive, people often fear taking a stand
against the most tyrannical of governments.

If Professor
Tytler’s thesis is correct, the next stage for America is a return to bondage.
Some people think we are already there. In fact, we have gone far enough down
the road to government dependency it seems to me the only way to save ourselves
from Tytler’s predicted destiny is go back to spiritual faith and courage.

Our founders had a place to run from tyranny. They named it America. They were lucky… even with all of the
disasters that befell them, they were lucky.
We have no place to run. We
either have to be much smarter than those who are making slaves of us and beat
them at their own game; or, we need to fight in a way that doesn’t give them
the tool they need to declare martial law (hello, FEMA camps if that happens);
or we need to accept slavery as a way of life for ourselves and our
progeny.

About Me

Marilyn MacGruder Barnewall began her career in 1956 as a journalist with the Wyoming Eagle in Cheyenne. During her 20 years (plus) as a banker and bank consultant, she wrote extensively for The American Banker, Bank Marketing Magazine, Trust Marketing Magazine, was U.S. Consulting Editor for Private Banker International (London/Dublin), and other major banking industry publications. Barnewall taught private banking at Colorado University and has authored seven banking books, one dog book, and two works of fiction and one biography.
Barnewall is the former editor of The National Peace Officer Magazine and has written editorials for the Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News and Newsweek, etc. She has written for News With Views, World Net Daily, Canada Free Press, Christian Business Daily, Business Reform, and others. She has been quoted in Time, Forbes, Wall Street Journal and other national and international publications. She can be found in Who's Who in America (2005-10), Who's Who of American Women (2006-10), Who's Who in Finance and Business (2006-10), and Who's Who in the World (2008).